Monday 31 July 2006

A little mirth


This is a picture of what you can see from Dyke road, so basically it either is the dyke or is from the dyke, I can't quite work out what the exact meaning of the word is in the Canadian language. There seemed to be nothing that I could see that would hold back the sea.

Ok, I'll come back to Dyke Road, quite literally in fact.

Yesterday afternoon we went to the cinema to see 'Clerks II'. My goodness it is shamefully funny. What I mean by that is if you have no shame, then it is so funny you will stop breathing. This happened to me, tears were running down my face, making my mascara form Kiss-like rivulets and my diaphragm couldn't keep up with my lungs. Don't tell me that's too much medical detail, or inaccurate, this is Kevin Smith we're talking about.

I also managed to see two more films on TV, neither of which was funny, but both of which I greatly enjoyed. 'Four Brothers', not a critically acclaimed film, but rather satisfying nonetheless and 'I'll Sleep when I'm Dead' a film with Clive Owen. Sorry, an excellent film with Clive Owen, I forgot that he'd done that rather sub-standard one with Jennifer Aniston.

At the weekend, my friend Canadian Karen, saw the actress who plays Jenny from the L-Word. I was supposed to have gone to this event, so I should have seen her too, but I'm more happy that Karen saw her. It's just... there must be some kind of celeb etiquette, and what is it? Do you run over and gush at them? Do you pretend you haven't noticed them? And then, each celeb might be different, some might crave love from their fans, some might crave privacy from their fans. Who knows? I think it should be an additional piece of information available on imdb.com. Mia Kirschner,** (craves attention) Kate Winslett ^^ (craves privacy). Ah well, I'm sure I pondered this same unanswerable question when I saw one of my own top celebs on Elm Grove, David Wells.

God bless the Guardian - normally - but an article today pushes a particular button for me. The article talks about whether lesbian attitudes to some gay male behaviours is changing. Ok, interesting idea and the article takes quite a raunchy look at the lesbian scene. But what makes me rather uncomfortable is the article's insistence on referring to lesbians as 'Dykes'. I think this is similar to white people calling black people 'niggers' or straight people calling gay men 'fags'. People can call themselves those names, but outsiders can't. I can giggle when my friend refers to my beloved Ikea as 'Dykea' and I can wonder how the City of Richmond can be so bold as to have a 'Dyke Road', I can also use it 'entre nous' with friends who are part of the lesbian community in private*, but there seems something profoundly disrespectful to publicly use words that have traditionally been used as terms of abuse at least until they are 'taken back'. - I learned that from the Kevin Smith film yesterday, one of his characters was 'taking back' the term 'porch monkey'- badly.

So why was I at Dyke Road? My son now has a job there, he's a meat-packer. No seriously :)

* Deliberate tautology** for Karen.
** Tautology - the science of becoming taut.

Addendum : After publishing my own blog, I then went to look at the others I read, and this has pissed me right off, taken all the mirth out of me. Lousie Livesey makes all the points I would myself, so I have nothing to add except - please read the post.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh I'm so jealous of whoever got to see Jenny - oh wait, that was me. Celebrity. Indeedy. It was a split second thing. I caught her eye and said, "love the L-word." She said, "thank you" in a rather genuine voice and then squirried away with her friends. I did not get to bow down to her, though my pal Tracy did in a rather ironic way. She has dreadlocks, Tracy does, so she can do that type of thing. Sadly, no one but you, Tracy and my gay friend Shay in Virginia even know who Mia Kirshner is (I knew her from years ago, when she was 17 and playing a dominatrix in Love and Human Remains). Shay said, "oh, I hate her.' I said Shay, you hate Jenny, you don't know Mia. Not like I know Mia.
- Karen

Anonymous said...

"... or homosexual people calling heterosexual people 'breeders.'"

I loved 'Four Brothers.' Mark Wahlberg played an excellent role, and I felt there was some multiple meanings to the word 'Brothers' in the title. "Not like an actual brother, but more like the way black people mean it, which is more meaningful, I think." -Derek Zoolander.

He and I share the following traits: 1) wonderfully entranced with Donnie Wahlberg at one point in our lives, owing much of our formative years to following him, 2) Each of us has a supernumerary nipple, and 3) There's no telling how famous either of us will be after making a movie as bad as 'The Truth About Charlie.'"

Schneewittchen said...

I loved Zoolander, I think it is one of the funniest films ever, when it first came out and I saw it at the cinema, I couldn't breath properly from laughing throughout the whole film.